Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 10, 2022 – Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

On a beautiful summer Sunday morning, just like this one, back in the 1950s – I don’t remember if it was ‘55, ‘56 or ‘57 – there was a horrific auto accident right out here on the hill going up toward Wurtsboro Hills. If you’re coming down, there’s a big curve in the road and, just beyond that curve, an oil tanker flipped over on its side and burst into flames. Behind it, twelve more cars collided, one after another. The car right behind it had six passengers, all of whom were killed. And there were another three or four people in addition to them who lost their lives in that accident. The accident was so terrible that, for a dozen years, nothing grew on the shoulder of the road right by where Valentine Dam Rd is today.

There used to be a sign at the top of the long hill, right by Sarine Rd in Masten Lake, that said, “Steep hill. Truckers use low gear.” And it had a little picture of a line like this, with a truck going downhill. That’s how dangerous that road was. And this dreadful accident, which made the front page of the New York Daily News the following day, that’s how dangerous that was.

Now, you have to understand how steep that hill is. Rock Hill is approximately 1,475 feet above sea level. Wurtsboro is 575 feet above sea level. That’s a drop of 900 feet in four miles. That’s extraordinary.

But, Jesus says in His story this morning, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…” Why was he going down? Because Jerusalem is 2,500 feet above sea level. It’s built on the top of Mount Zion. Jericho is along the border of the Dead Sea. Today, if you drive from Jerusalem to Jericho, as you pass along the road, you come across a sign saying, “You are now below sea level.” When you get to Jericho, you are 1,000 feet below sea level. Which means that the drop from Jerusalem to Jericho is incredible. It’s 3,500 feet in 15 miles. It was so steep in Jesus’ day, that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a series of switchbacks – this way and this way, this way and this way – so you could negotiate the steepness without falling right over. So, those switchbacks provided all sorts of places where there were stone outcroppings, where people could hide and watch the road in both directions until they were sure that nobody else was coming except that lone traveler. They could beset him and be on their way before anybody noticed.

Now, Jesus says that there was a priest going down the same way, and a Levite who was going down the same way. When we hear that, we shouldn’t hear that with a 21^st century bias. We’re not talking about a Catholic priest and a deacon, who would be obliged by mere humanity and by their vocation, to help anyone in such serious trouble as the victim. Oh, no, we’re talking about a Jewish priest and a Jewish Levite, who had just come from doing their work in the Jewish temple. And, in order to perform the liturgies in the Jewish temple, - as a matter of fact, in order to go inside the temple at all, priest or non-priest – you had to be ritually pure. To touch anything that had blood on it, or anybody who was bleeding, made you immediately ritually un-pure. And so, since the priest and the Levite were engaged in keeping The First Commandment of the whole Torah - Thou shalt love the Lord God with all thy heart, all thy soul, all thy mind, etc. – engaged by vocation and preference in doing that, it was of extreme importance that they not go near anybody who was bleeding. And so, they were obeying the law by not helping that man. Now, the Samaritan, on the other hand.

A week or two ago, in the gospel, we found out that Jesus sent out emissaries to go before Him on His trip to Jerusalem, because they were going to pass, among other things, through Samaritan territory. And when they went to one town, the Samaritans said, “Don’t send Jesus here. We don’t want Him.” And when they came back to Jesus they said, “When we go there do you want us to call down thunder and lightning on all these people and kill them because they wouldn’t accept you? And Jesus just shrugged His shoulders and told them to stop being so stupid.

Everybody knew that nobody liked Samaritans. And there was a very good reason why they didn’t like them. Because they were heretics. They said you don’t worship God in the temple in Jerusalem, you worship God on Mount Gerizim, where we live. And this just didn’t fly with the majority of Jews. And so, people had contempt for Samaritans because they considered them to be unworthy.

So Jesus tells a story, in which the only way to keep the second commandment – Love your neighbor as yourself – is to specifically violate the first commandment - Thou shalt love God above all things. That’s the point of the story really. Not who is my neighbor?

That’s why I pointed out, before our lector read the second reading, that the way Paul structures the reading is like a mirror image. Here’s Jesus, first-born of all creation. Here’s Jesus, first-born of the new creation, or the re-creation, of the world. Now, there is a little catch in all of that. In the Latin and in the Greek, the word can either mean “creation,” like our translation said. Creation is a thing, a concept. Or it can mean “creature.” It’s the same word for either one. And so, you toss a coin if you’re a translator and decide, “When I get to this word, do I want to use the word “creation” or the word “creature.” Our translation chose the word “creation,” which is a concept. Many other translations choose, more correctly for what Paul is all about, the word “creature.” He’s saying, “The Creator of all things decided to become a creature. He made Himself into what He made.” And that is the essence of the miracle of the incarnation. That the Creator of all things makes Himself into what He made, out of love for what He made. If you understand it that way, the crucifixion is almost a footnote to this great gesture of incomparable love by the Creator of all things.

Every day we pass by all sorts of creatures, don’t we? The trees are creatures. The flowers are creatures. The birds, the other animals are creatures. Everything around us is creatures. And you and I are creatures. Do we pass by on the other side? Or do we stop to help?